"Changes to AP History make conservatives happy"

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/changes-ap-history-make-conservatives-happy

The first national salvo in the fight caught many off guard. Exactly one year ago next week, members of the Republican National Committee gathered for a regularly scheduled meeting, and took up a fairly obscure resolution: RNC activists voted to condemn Advanced Placement U.S. History classes for presenting a “consistently negative view of American history.”

Perhaps the vote shouldn’t have come as too big of a surprise – in far-right circles, the complaints about AP history courses have been loud and frequent. By one count, Republican officials in as many as six states “attempted to crudely politicize our past” by going after the curriculum. In Oklahoma, some lawmakers voted to ban the class altogether.

...

Now, after nearly a year of uproar, the College Board, the group that writes the AP exam, has made major changes to the framework – and it’s won conservatives over, in part by putting less emphasis on racism.

Passages that previously cited racial attitudes, stereotyping, and white superiority in early American history have been rewritten or deleted, and some passages that previously implicated early European colonists in racism and aiding in destructive Native American warfare have been softened and replaced with more passive language.

We're going backwards, whitewashing history even more than we already had, simply to make RWers happy. For those who still refuse to believe in white privilege, here's about the most blatant example you can get. Rewriting history to make white people happier about themselves, and not let their kids see just how vile the past was.

[merrily]

1. And that troubles you, Winston? It's all for the greater good, you know.

[daleanime]

2. ......

[Igel]

3. I've lived long enough

around colleges and universities to have the following observation.

Back when history was more "American exceptionalism", at least the undergrad version at lesser colleges, you'd hear the following:

"There is no unbiased history. It's a narrative, a way of viewing things. You pick your facts to build your story, and your story largely dictates which facts are important and the interpretation you give them. There are multiple views of history, and it's important to see what purpose each narrative serves, because together you get a better picture than any one narrative could provide."

This often accompanied cries from the right about revisionism in history. But this pablum served to justify the inclusion of other voices and views in the curriculum, to get a place at the table for opposing views.

Since then you hear the following:

"We need to keep our unbiased, objective history to properly understand the role that the US has played in a Western imperialist hegemony and the ways in which voices have been muted and oppressed. We cannot allow a revisionism that serves to mask history."

"Revisionism," now, is often asserting in 2015 what was originally written the 1940s. That the view has changed from inclusion to exclusion makes the claims made in the '60s and '70s and even '80s seem not only specious but duplicitous. Get in the gate under cover of "inclusion," but once inside you insist on the former occupants' exclusion.

Kto kogo. "Under capitalism, man oppresses man. It's much better under Socialism, where instead man oppresses man."